Hi,
I'm Paul Walsh, CEO and Co-founder of Segala [1], specialist in Web
accessibility and mobile web standards compliance. Specialist in enabling
trust on the Web using content labelling based on RDF-CL [2]
I was AOL's first International Beta Coordinator and Technical Accounts
Manager in Europe (started in a porter cabin with 25 people!). Working for
AOL UK, I was part of a small new technologies team responsible for
delivering all new technology and clients from 1995 to 1998. Helped to
launch AOL Sweden and wrote a paper on how to launch a new client in a new
country which was used during the launch of Australia Online.
I'm Chair of the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) [3] - trade
association for the interactive industry. I'm also Chair of the BIMA Awards
2006 [4] Most of BIMA's membership is made of agencies and freelancers that
design and build Web sites - perfect audience for Semantic Web.
Segala's involvement in other W3C work:
- Active participant in WCAG WG [5]
- Active participant in ERT WG [6]
- Founding Sponsor of the MWI [7]
- co-editor of the "mobileOK" conformance document [8]
- Sponsor of the WCL XG [9]
I help manage the Web 2.0 business community blog in Ireland so can use this
along with it's partner TechCrunch UK to promote SM.
Segala's main motivation for supporting this initiative is to help
demonstrate the real commercial and social benefits of the SM.
Segala has a Firefox extension that reads RDF and annotates search results
to distinguish sites that contain additional metadata using a content label.
We're going to extend this to read FOAF and enable trust for people through
the browser. Basically anything that this group would like to demonstrate in
a browser or search engine, Segala can delivery through a (signed) Firefox
extension. David Rooks will demonstrate the browser at the face to face in
Boston. I'm hosting a Firefox launch party in Dublin so won't be able to
make the meeting :(
Would the W3C and/or someone on this list like to deliver a keynote on the
Semantic Web at the Firefox Ireland party [10] that I'm hosting in Dublin?
There will be some very well connected people attending.
[1] http://www.segala.com/
[2] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/wcl/XGR-report/
[3] http://www.bima.co.uk/
[4] http://secure.bima.co.uk/awards2006/the-judges.htm
[5] http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/Overview.html
[6] http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/Overview.html
[7] http://www.w3.org/Mobile/
[8] http://www.w3.org/TR/mobileOK/
[9] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/wcl/wcl-charter-20060208
[10] http://www.firefoxparty.com/parties/view/251
Kind regards,
Paul
-----Original Message-----
From: public-sweo-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:public-sweo-ig-request@w3.org]
On Behalf Of Steve Harris
Sent: 26 October 2006 14:39
To: W3C SWEO IG
Subject: Introduction: Steve Harris
Hi,
I'm Steve Harris[1], since February of this year I've been working
for a startup called Garlik[2]. My role is designing and helping to
build a fast and scalable RDF store, intended to run across small
clusters. This provides the backend storage and querying capability
for our soon-to-be-released web frontend.
Prior to that I worked as a researcher in the Multimedia Research
group, later to become the Intelligence Agents Multimedia[3] group of
the University of Southampton, UK. From 1996 I was working on web
based hypertext systems, then various other information systems,
finally focused on semantic web based systems research around 2001.
My main research focus became the very pragmatic end of semantic web
research, mainly high performance triple stores[4] and RDF and
ontology optimisation.
My technological leaning is UNIX/C hacking with a fair amount of web
and database stuff thrown in. I've also done some audio DSP coding.
My first contribution to the W3C was as a member of the DAWG working
group[5], helping to define the SPARQL query language. My motivation
for joining SWEO is to help promote RDF to like-minded hacker types,
who might otherwise be put off by the reputation for complexity that
RDF, and the semantic web in general, seem to have gained.
ObPersonalInfo: I currently live in Southampton (on the south coast
of England) and work in Richmond, just this side of London. I'm
English, though I've lived in a variety of different places at
different times. I'm an enthusiastic, i.e. not necessarily talented,
photographer[6] and musician[I'll spare you].
- Steve
[1] http://inanna.ecs.soton.ac.uk/swh.xrdf
[2] http://www.garlik.com/
[3] http://www.iam.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
[4] http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11126/01/harris-ssws05.pdf
[5] http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/DataAccess/
[6] http://www.flickr.com/photos/steveharris